


Sugar, Spice, and Radical Praxis

by scheherazade



Series: Nantoka Daigaku (College AU) [7]
Category: Tenimyu RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 15:10:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13954254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scheherazade/pseuds/scheherazade
Summary: Yata doesn't enjoy the frivolous gamification of domestic labor. It'd taken Hideya a couple days to figure out what he meant by that wasbaking.





	Sugar, Spice, and Radical Praxis

Hideya answers the door to find Yata standing there, holding a shopping bag in his arms and wearing an expression of grim determination.

"Good morning," says Yata.

Hideya blinks. "Morning. Um." 

Yata makes a vague shrugging motion. "I come bearing flour and other assorted supplies." After a pause, in which Hideya searches for an appropriate response and finds none, Yata adds, "It's the second Sunday of the month. Ikkei said this is when you bake."

"Oh! It is. I mean..." 

It'd become something of an accidental tradition, starting from Hideya craving sweets one frigid February evening, and neither of them willing to brave a fifteen minute walk to the nearest bakery—so Ikkei nicked a bag of flour from Seiya (who was going through a paper mache phase), Hideya scraped together all the sugar they had in the apartment, and they'd made a dozen cookies from scratch.

Two years later, their kitchen is always stocked with baking supplies and Hideya has gotten pretty good at making cookies, as well as cupcakes and muffins. Two years later, Ikkei sends Hideya recipes he finds while browsing Pinterest and Hideya picks out the ones he wants to try on Sunday. Two years later, the monthly bake now also includes Mario, who doesn't actually do much, but Ikkei doesn't mind and neither does Hideya. 

The baseball team have gotten used to snacking on the confections that Mario periodically brings to practice. _You'll rot your teeth if you actually eat all that sugar, Hideyan,_ Ikkei always scolds. But Hideya also sees the happy smile on Mario's face when Ikkei sends him off with tupperwares full of sweets. 

And no, Hideya doesn't mind in the least. The best part of baking, after all, is sharing it with the people you love.

Speaking of which. 

"Are you—" Hideya looks from the shopping bag Yata is holding to the expression that Yata is wearing. He'd never asked, because Yata doesn't enjoy the frivolous gamification of domestic labor. It'd taken Hideya a couple days to figure out what he meant by that was _baking_ —but Hideya had figured it out. He always does, in the end. 

Which is why he's almost afraid to ask, even with the evidence right before his eyes, "Are you baking with us, Yata-chan?"

"Hideyan, who is— Yata?" Ikkei stops dead in the entryway. He's wearing an apron already dusted with flour, and what looks like a streak of chocolate.

Mario pokes his head around Ikkei's shoulder. "Hey, Yata-chan! Are you joining us?"

Yata's expression has gone from determined (looking at Hideya) to defensive (Ikkei) to disgruntled (Mario). Yata is really quite easy to read, Hideya thinks, if you know what you're looking for.

"Yes." Yata sounds not at all convincing. "If you don't mind. I assumed your standing invitation was good until rescinded."

The last is addressed to Ikkei, who narrows his eyes for a split second. Hideya takes a moment to wonder when Ikkei had invited Yata to bake with them; Yata's distaste for culinary hobbies is only matched by Ikkei's distaste for Yata's distaste, which.

But Ikkei just says, "Come in," and, "What's in the bag?"

"Flour." Yata toes off his shoes. He hands the bag off to Mario. "And various other things I found in the grocery aisle."

Mario removes a box of hot chocolate mix and, for some reason, canned tuna. "Erm. Was this the grocery aisle at the convenience store?" Hideya swears that Ikkei's eyelid, as well as eyebrow, twitches.

"Have you even baked before?" Ikkei sighs as they follow him to the kitchen. "No, don't answer that. You can help Mario line the muffin tins."

"What type of muffins are you making?"

"We're making malt cupcakes," Mario says brightly. 

Yata raises an eyebrow. "Then why am I...aligning muffin tins?"

Hideyan covers his mouth with one hand; neither Yata nor Ikkei appreciates being laughed at. 

"It's the same kind of tin for both," Ikkei says. What might be a muttered _god help me_ follows. "Put that bag down, Mario. Hideyan, do you want to get started on the batter or should I?"

"I'll do it." Hideya picks up the sieve that Ikkei had just put out for the flour. He hesitates, watching Yata eye Mario who's picking out all the yellow ones from a multicolored pack of cup liners. "Do you need help, Yata-chan...?"

"I think I have it under control." Yata sounds more dismissive than anything else. Mario hands Yata a muffin tin. "It's hardly rocket science."

Pots and pans bang against each other as Ikkei takes out another mixing bowl. Hideya shuffles aside to make room on the counter for him, like always. Ikkei measures out a cup of milk, a half cup of oil, and two teaspoons of vanilla extract. Hideya sends a puff of flour into the air while sifting the dry ingredients together—"Oops"—and Ikkei says nothing. 

And that's strange. Usually, Ikkei would at least sigh over the mess in his kitchen, even though making a bit of a mess is as integral to baking as having fun.

Ikkei cracks an egg into the vanilla mixture.

"So how's your thesis going, Yata-chan?" Mario asks at the table, where he's struggling to open a pack of malted milk balls. 

Yata examines a blue cup liner. "It goes. You can't rush these things."

"The course of genius?" Ikkei asks archly. 

"Ninety percent of writing happens within the mind."

"Oh, is _that_ where you've been this entire semester."

Mario looks from Ikkei to Yata. Hideya blinks. He hadn't noticed—probably because he and Yata have a standing lunch date every day neither of them have class between twelve and two—but it's entirely possible that, apart from texting Hideya to complain about student activity funding allocations and rambling thesis thoughts over soup and salad, Yata has been holed up in the third floor of the library and not spoken to anyone else since spring break.

That would explain why Ikkei is acting like Yata has personally offended him.

They've been friends longer than Hideya has known Yata. Ever since the first week of freshman year, from what Ikkei's told him. Hideya is pretty sure that Yata is Ikkei's best friend, and vice versa. Even if neither of them will ever admit it.

Distracted, Hideya adds the next ingredient on the list to his bowl—and realizes a split second too late that the jar he'd dug a tablespoon into wasn't sugar. 

"Uh oh."

Ikkei looks up from his mixing. "What's wrong?"

"Um." Hideya sheepishly tries to scoop the white grains out of the flour, but that just makes half of it disappear into the mixture. "I think I just made our cupcakes salty instead of sweet?"

Ikkei looks at him. Looks at the bowl. Looks at the jar at Hideya's elbow—clearly labelled _Sea Salt_ —and bursts out laughing. 

"What happened?" Yata asks, at the same time Mario offers, "You always add a little salt to the batter though, don't you, Ikkei?"

"We do," Ikkei says, once he's got himself under control. He wipes a tear from his eye; his hand leaves a streak of flour across his cheek. His voice is fond, as is the way he glances at Mario, who beams back. Ikkei says, "It's all right, Hideyan. How much did you add?"

"A tablespoon? A little less, maybe. I tried to get some out, but..."

"Well," Ikkei says thoughtfully, "you'd usually add half a teaspoon to bring out the flavor..."

"How many teaspoons are in a tablespoon?" Mario asks. 

Yata says, "Three."

Three pairs of eyes turn to stare at him. Yata pushes a green cup liner into the muffin tin. He looks up when the silence stretches. His expression is perfectly blank. "If I remember correctly. Did I remember incorrectly?"

Ikkei glances at the measurements guide Hideya had printed out and tacked to the fridge months ago. "No," he says slowly. "You're correct." He sounds puzzled. 

"Thank you." Yata picks up a stick of butter. "I studied."

"You—what?"

"I reviewed the basics of cookery and baking this morning." Yata meticulously peels back the wrapper from the stick of butter and, after a moment of contemplation, dabs it into a cup liner, as carefully as if he's putting the finishing touches on a painting. 

Yata doesn't actually paint, as far as Hideya knows, but he'd probably be good at it. Yata is good at most things. Including, apparently, memorizing units of measurement. 

"Well," Mario says cheerfully. "That's Yata-chan for you. So! It's just three time as much salt as you'd normally add."

"Six," Yata says. "There are six half teaspoons in one tablespoon. Speaking of which," Yata sounds contemplative as he butters the cup liners, "why is it called a tablespoon? Is a 'table' an archaic multiple prefix preceding the metric system of measurement?"

"Er," says Mario, while Hideya hedges with, "I don't think so?" 

"A tablespoon is a spoon that's used at the table, for eating," Ikkei snaps. "Like a soup spoon. One larger than a teaspoon, which—as you can guess—is the one used for tea."

"I see." Yata examines the cup liners. "Fascinating."

"Is it?"

"Is it not?"

"What if we triple the rest of the ingredients," Hideya says quickly, "and add an extra half cup of sugar to balance out the salt?"

"We're going to end up with three dozen cupcakes," Ikkei points out. 

"You could bring the extras to drama club," Mario suggests. "Or, well, I guess Yata could. Are you still doing drama club, Hideyan?"

"Not this semester," Hideya admits. It'd taken him a couple weeks to concede that, no, he really doesn't have time right now between classes and thesis and, well, dating Yata. Any one of those things is a full-time commitment, and so is the spring musical.

It still feels a little strange—a little fizzy, bubbly kind of strange—thinking of Yata as his boyfriend. Actually, he's not sure Yata even wants to be called his boyfriend. They haven't really talked about that. They've talked about lots of other things, including what they're both doing next year, and after that—but they haven't talked about this. 

It's been nearly a month. Maybe they should. 

Maybe not in front of Ikkei, though. Hideya knows Ikkei won't actually get mad at him for spending time with Yata—especially when he has a good reason—but Ikkei does get a little weird about being ambushed with things he wasn't expecting.

Like Yata showing up to baking today, probably.

"Do you have more cupcake enclosures?" Yata asks. 

Ikkei gives him a blank look. "Do I have more what?"

"These things." Yata gestures at the two tins he's just finished lining. "If you are making three dozen, you will need four more. Correct?"

Ikkei opens his mouth. Closes it. Hideya says for him, "We'll just have to bake them in batches."

"Or we could make a big cake," Mario suggests. "You can use the square tin maybe?"

"The brownie tin? Didn't Inagaki steal it for some art project?" Ikkei opens a cupboard, sighs at the barely controlled chaos of jars and flatware contained within. "Why is my life such a mess."

"Because senior year," Hideya says sympathetically. He peers over Ikkei's head, pushes some mugs out of the way to help him search. "I mean, I could have sworn Tatsu brought it back..."

"Are those two still seeing each other?" Yata asks.

Hideya nearly drops a bowl on Ikkei's head. "What?"

"I was under the impression that their sexual relationship ended a while back," Yata says, while Mario's eyes widen and even Ikkei turns around to give him a disbelieving look. "But I suppose people do regress. Personal growth doesn't necessarily have to be linear."

"Uh," says Mario, and Hideya is inclined to agree. 

Ikkei says, "They're not. Aha!" He fishes the brownie tin out from the depth of the cupboard. "Tatsunari just finally got over the break up. And before you start on the ontological impossibility of breaking up with someone you were never dating in the first place—" Yata's mouth snaps shut; Hideya has to turn away to hide a smile, "—I submit that the emotional truth trumps semantics here, and this field is one outside your realm of expertise."

"Harsh," Yata says, even as Hideya thinks the same. "You do realize my entire thesis is about love."

"Uh, you're doing a thesis on _Marxism_."

Hideya blinks. "I thought you were writing about Lacanian gaze theory?"

Mario looks confused. "Aren't you a gender studies major?"

"Yes, yes, and technically interdisciplinary." Yata seems unperturbed. It takes a lot of perturb him on any given day. "I am fond of the gender studies department, but unfortunately Nagayama-sensei doesn't like Althusser. And the polisci old boys refuse to admit that gender is political. And philosophy—"

"Isn't a real department," Ikkei finishes for him, eye roll and all.

"God bless Ohkuchi-sensei. But yes. Correct."

Hideya smiles to himself as gathers more dry ingredients. The bag of flour feels empty when he lifts it; a peek inside reveals that it is. Good thing Yata brought more flour, Hideya thinks, looking around for the shopping bag that Mario had put down somewhere.

"So," Hideya hears Mario say, "what's your thesis about, Yata-chan?"

Ikkei narrows his eyes as he cracks another egg into his bowl. 

Yata says, "If I could explain it in a sentence, I wouldn't have to write eighty pages of a thesis, now would I?" Hideya sees Ikkei start to turn around, just as Yata adds, "But if I had to condense it, I suppose it's about the experience of being."

"Um, being what?"

"That's the central question." Yata sounds contemplative. "What does it mean, to be a thinking subject under late capitalist structures of rights and identity? The project actually began as deconstruction of gendered dialectics in posthumanist Marxism, though it has since wandered into Lacanian visual theory and, as a result, psychoanalysis."

Hideya sees Ikkei roll his eyes. Mario says, "Wow, that sounds...like a lot."

"It is," Yata agrees amicably. "It's also mostly hogwash."

Hideya coughs. Everyone glances at him, and he shrugs, unable to hide his smile. "Nothing. Just. That sounds like something Ikkei would say."

"It's what most people would say," Ikkei notes, whisking vanilla into eggs and milk. 

"This is gonna sound dumb," Mario laughs a little nervously, "but what, uh, what exactly is a dialectic?"

Hideya opens his mouth to explain, in terms that won't make Mario feel left out, and Yata gets there first with: 

"It's just a fancy word for transformation, often of disparate or contradictory things. Think of it as baking: the bicarbonate is bitter, and raw eggs can make you sick. But with the correct application of heat, it transforms into something greater than the sum of its parts. Something edible."

"And delicious," Hideya supplies. 

"Oh." Mario looks puzzled for a second longer. Then he grins. "So basically what you're saying is, you're turning salty philosophers into a rainbow cake?"

Ikkei makes a sound suspiciously like a strangled yelp. 

Yata says, "That's one way of looking at it."

"Either way," Ikkei remarks, "you have to admit that no part of your thesis has anything to do with love or human emotion."

"Because love is a social construct?" Hideya asks. Ikkei gives him a look. Hideya smiles back, and Ikkei rolls his eyes; but he's smiling as well.

"The pedestrian definition of love, perhaps." Yata snags one of the malted milk balls that Mario is arranging into a pattern on a plate. "But there's something to be said for _agape_ vis-a-vis revolutionary subjecthood."

Hideya gives him a curious look. "The radical praxis of love?"

Ikkei frowns. "Have you been reading Audre Lorde?"

Yata shrugs. "Augustine."

" _You're_ reading _theology?_ " Ikkei is incredulous.

"You've completely lost me now." Mario sounds sheepish.

"I understand," Yata says graciously. "Perhaps you'd like to read my thesis when I complete it. I hope the final product will be more hermeneutically coherent."

"Er," says Mario. "Yeah, sure! I mean, if you don't mind."

"We can form a book club during senior week," Ikkei says. "But first, both of you come here and help me lift this. You done with the dry mixture, Hideya?"

"Yup!" 

Hideya watches Mario teleport to Ikkei's side, while Yata follows at a more sedate pace. Ikkei instructs the pair of them to lift the soup tureen he's using for a mixing bowl. It's shaped like a fish, a Christmas present from Ikkei's mother. Why she thought Ikkei would need a soup tureen large enough to serve twelve people, Hideya doesn't know. It's the only thing large enough for making as many cupcakes as they're trying to make, though. 

"What on earth is this thing?" Yata asks, as Mario tries to get a grip on the fish's ceramic fins. Hideya grabs the lip to help them steady it.

"Improvisational baking." Ikkei holds the dry ingredient bowl while he directs all three of them. "All right, on three, pour it slowly into this. One, two…" Hideya notices the whisk still floating in the soup tureen a split second before Ikkei says, "Three," and Mario tips the whole thing sideways. 

Egg mixture and whisk drop together into the flour, sending a puff high into the air and all over Ikkei's face and clothes. 

"Oh no," says Mario.

Yata starts laughing first, and Hideya has to bite his lip to keep from doing the same and dropping the soup tureen because Yata has let go to snicker into his arm, and Mario is already fussing over Ikkei.

"It's fine, I'm—just leave it. Ugh," Ikkei says, with feeling. His disgruntled expression sends Yata into a fresh burst of laughter. "Shut up. You know what. I've been told that making a royal mess is a part of baking."

Hideya smiles. "Just like having fun." 

Mario brushes flour out of Ikkei's hair. Ikkei makes a face.

Yata examines a soup ladle. "Why don't we just scoop the liquid into the the other bowl?" 

Hideya nods and grabs the measuring cup. Mario picks up a spoon—puts it down in favor of a small bowl instead. He shrugs. "This'll work, right?"

"Yeah, why not." Ikkei puts the mixing bowl down on the counter and picks up a mug.

"Improvising," Hideya says, smiling.

"Speaking of." Yata ladles egg mixture into the flour (half of it ends up on the counter instead). "All of you should come to improv night on Friday. It's going to be Inagaki's last performance, I assume because after that his advisor's locking him in the art building basement until he gets started on his thesis."

"They wouldn't actually lock him in the basement," Ikkei notes. "Not without supervision."

Yata makes a humming sound. "I worry about him sometimes."

"Inagaki?"

"Naoya-sensei."

Ikkei snorts, Mario laughs, and Hideya smiles to himself as well. 

It's strange, probably, to be worrying about professors who are supposed to be worrying about you—but it's just like Yata. Yata is the kind of person who never lets on that he pays attention to anything or cares about anyone, but he's also the person who'll suddenly show up on a Sunday morning with flour and canned tuna, and put in his best effort at being sociable while attempting an activity that he clearly has no capacity for.

Yata is good at everything he does, because Yata tends to only do things he's good at.

So Hideya can be forgiven, he thinks, for grinning like an idiot as he watches Yata warily dabbing a whisk into the batter while Ikkei sighs noisily over his shoulder and Mario offers advice on how to get the lumps out.

They get the cupcakes into the oven without any more mishaps. Ikkei sets the timer for twenty minutes, then goes to take a shower. Mario retreats to Ikkei's room to use his laptop to email his advisor, and Hideya takes the opportunity to wipe down the counter. 

Yata sits down at the kitchen table and opens a book. 

"Read anything good this week?" Hideya asks. 

Yata tilts his book to show him the cover: _The Argonauts._ "Rereading, technically."

"It holds up." Hideya has reread the book—or at least select parts—at least three times since Yata recommended it over the summer. They've talked about all of it. Though, "Is this for your thesis, or just because?"

"Mm." Yata flips to a dog-eared page. "Bit of both, I suppose. I'm at an impasse."

"With what?"

"My thesis."

"What," Hideya jokes, "is it standing in the middle of a bridge shouting _you shall not pass?_ "

"I've never actually seen _Lord of the Rings._ "

"But you know all the references. Weird." 

Yata smiles faintly. Hideya tosses the paper towel and pulls up a chair. He steals one of the malted milk balls as well—they have more than enough for decorating the cupcakes, probably—uses Yata's shoulder as an armrest, peering at the page the book is open to. 

"Is that helping with your thesis?"

"I don't know," Yata says. Hideya nearly chokes on the candy. "What?"

"Nothing." Hideya clears his throat. "I don't think I've ever heard you say that before. That you don't know something."

"I'm not that pretentious, am I?"

"Mm. Confident is the better word, I think." Hideya smiles at Yata. "Tell me what you're thinking. Maybe we can talk through it."

Yata snorts. "If only it worked like that." He looks thoughtful, though. "It's possible I'm getting more than a little tired of egomaniacal writers. Badiou keeps claiming he's a populist, but he's just as self-aggrandizing as Zizek underneath all the high-minded theory."

"Did you watch his interview at the Stanford conference? I think he's finally embracing his inner nihilist."

"Nihilism embraced _him_ about twenty years ago."

Hideya laughs. "I didn't know nihilism was such a cuddle monster."

"Don't you start," Yata says, though all Hideya's done is loop his arm around Yata's. It's not like Ikkei or Mario will be back for a while yet. Probably not until the timer goes off. Mario probably got distracted by Facebook, and Ikkei takes at least fifteen minutes to shower.

Yata says quietly, "It gets exhausting, arguing with formalists about something so intimately lived. That is what I set out to explore, so it makes sense that this is what I keep coming back to. But."

"But?"

"Form matters."

"I guess. But a thesis is a thesis, isn't it? Fifty to eighty pages, plus a dozen for bibliography."

"Academic writing isn't the same thing as personal dialectic." Yata's fingers run through Hideya's hair, almost absentmindedly; the thinking look on his face tells Hideya that it probably wasn't a conscious decision. Psychoanalysis aside, the fact that this is one of Yata's instinctive reactions—well. Hideya leans into it. 

Yata says, "Everything I've written in the past two weeks has been incredibly narcissistic. Closer to a confession than a serious inquiry into being. But it feels pretty serious. Thinking about love. And people who matter. People who matter because they make you matter." 

_Like you,_ Hideya thinks and doesn't voice. He doesn't want to interrupt, not just yet.

"There are things that force you to remember who you are," Yata says, "and then there are things that make you want to keep the memory as a landmark of who you might become. Things contradictory and mundane. And problematic."

"Like most things," Hideya reminds him. 

"And people," Yata agrees. He's trying not to smile. "Mario isn't actually all that problematic once you get to know him."

Hideya muffles a laugh. "That's either the meanest or nicest thing you've ever said about someone."

"Ikkei, on the other hand," Yata continues serenely, "is like an onion of problematics."

Hideya giggles. "You like onions, though."

"Guess I'm just a connoisseur of the mundane and problematic."

"You're no such thing," Hideya says fondly. "You're just the person who goes around theorizing about baking dialectics, but doesn't know how to turn on an oven."

"Look." Yata's lip twitches. "There's nothing wrong with rejecting the techniques that make possible the structural feminization of labor."

"Mmhm." Hideya traces a pattern on the back of Yata's hand. "Well, baking in and of itself might be structural exploitation—but I think baking for and with other people is an everyday praxis of radical love and being."

Yata turns his hand over, their fingers lacing together. "You're just saying words now," he accuses, and Hideya laughs, because yeah, probably. But even silly words are sometimes enough.

He leans in, and Yata meets him halfway. There's a bit of chocolate on Yata's lips from the malted milk balls. Hideya tells him as much.

"Occupational hazard," is the reply.

"That doesn't even mean anything," Hideya laughs. He can't seem to stop smiling. "But I'm glad you showed up. Thanks for baking with us."

"My pleasure," Yata says, and Hideya kisses him again.

And yeah, Hideya thinks as he tightens his grip on Yata's hand—this is what matters. There are plenty of ways to look at love and blackbirds, certainly more than thirteen, but he has only one way of experiencing this: by living. 

"Hideyan, is— Oh my god!" 

Hideya jumps and scrambles back so fast he nearly falls off his chair. Yata, on the other hand, turns around and, very calmly, looks Ikkei in the eye. 

"You could have knocked."

"Um, this is _my_ apartment," Ikkei says indignantly, before remembering, "Also, don't change the subject! What— You— Explain? What's going on?!"

"What's happening?" Mario appears from Ikkei's room, drawn by the commotion. 

Hideya fights the urge to cover his face with his hands. He can feel himself blushing, and the embarrassment of that is almost as bad as—as—well, as being caught making out with Yata in the kitchen. 

Then again, it's _his_ kitchen, too. 

That lets him recover enough to look up, just as Yata says, 

"You're going to have to step down as Rainbow Alliance co-chair if you need me to explain what it means for a man to kiss another man."

Mario's eyes go wide, Ikkei makes another indignant noise, and Hideya's blush returns full force. But there's nothing for it. Gamely, he tries to explain, 

"We haven't had a chance to tell you, but. Some things happened over spring break. And, um. We're dating? Kind of?"

Everyone's staring at him now. Including Yata, who raises both eyebrows. "Kind of?"

Hideya flaps his hands. "You know what I mean!"

"Aw, this is great!" Mario exclaims, and then he's got Hideya in a back-thumping hug. "I'm so happy for you! And Yata! Er." Mario stops himself from attempting to hug Yata, which is probably just as well. He settles for a huge grin instead. "About time, huh?"

"Excuse me?" Yata says, at the same time Ikkei splutters, "Wait, how did _you_ know?"

"Oh, I mean, I didn't _know,_ " Mario says. He's still grinning. "But I kinda thought you guys have liked each other for, I don't know. The last three years?"

And before anyone can react to _that_ , the timer goes off with an ear-splitting beep.

By the time Hideya has silenced and reset it, Ikkei has wrestled Mario into a pair of oven mitts so he doesn't burn himself getting the cupcakes out, and Yata thoughtfully lays down some coasters to protect the counter from the hot tins.

"You're telling me the whole story," Ikkei tells Hideya as they tip the cupcakes onto a wire rack. "Don't think you're getting out of this."

"Does the cake just stay in here?" Mario asks, poking the brownie tin—and quickly withdrawing his finger because, "Ouch."

"Let it cool in the pan," Ikkei says. He points at Yata, who's taken to wallflowering by the fridge. "You. Pitch in and help make the buttercream frosting."

"Using what?"

"Um, butter and cream? Butter's on the table, it's been out for a couple hours so it should be easy to soften. Mario, show him. Honestly," Ikkei sighs, "how are you this bad at baking when you're dating Hideyan?"

"Hey," Hideya says, while Yata remarks, "I don't know how your relationship with Mario works, Ikkei, but decorating cake isn't most people's preferred form of intimacy."

Hideya does cover his face with his hands this time. 

"We do other stuff, too," Mario says easily. He grabs a bowl and starts unwrapping the sticks of butter. "Grab a spoon, Yata-chan. This part's actually kinda fun."

"I can't believe you two didn't tell me," Ikkei mutters, as they finish arranging the cupcakes on the wire racks. "I assume you've seen him plenty the last couple of weeks?"

Hideya hesitates. "It's not—I wasn't trying to keep it from you. Honest."

"No, I know." Ikkei sighs. He's smiling wryly, though, when he looks up. "Sorry. I'm not mad at you. I'm just—I've been kind of worried about Yata, honestly. I haven't even seen him in the dining hall in weeks, and the last time he went incognito on me for this long, I'm pretty sure he was subsisting entirely on ramen and gatorade." 

"He's been eating properly," Hideya assures Ikkei. "We have lunch most days, actually. Um. We weren't keeping that from you, either. It was just."

"Quality time?" Ikkei's grin is teasing now.

"It's not like that, okay!" Hideya pulls a face at Ikkei's laugh. "We mostly talk about class. So just like usual, honestly. Yata-chan's always been like that." He can't keep the smile off his face as he thinks about it. "It's kind of great."

"I'm glad," Ikkei says. "I'm glad you got someone you like, Hideyan. You deserve it."

He does, doesn't he? The feeling that bubbles up in his chest confirms it. 

Hideya returns Ikkei's smile. "Thanks."

"Ikkei, are we making a regular buttercream or this meringue thing in the recipe?" Mario asks.

"Uh." Ikkei looks around. "Meringue, I think. Crap, we'll need a bain marie..."

"Who's bain marie?" Yata asks. "Friend of yours?"

Mario and Hideya burst out laughing before Ikkei even has a chance to round on Yata for being so utterly useless in the kitchen. Hideya glances at Yata and finds that he's also struggling to keep a straight face. Ikkei notices, too. He rolls his eyes, though his scowl is rapidly losing out to a smile. 

"I take it back," Ikkei says. "I can't believe you're dating someone who still thinks puns are funny."

"I think puns are pretty great," Mario remarks. 

Yata grins. "Pot, kettle, Yamamoto-san."

Ikkei pulls a face at Yata, which makes Yata laugh, and Hideya catches Mario looking at Ikkei with the same fondness that probably shows on his own face when he looks at Yata. 

And yeah, Hideya thinks. It is—puns and baking mishaps and all. 

All of this is pretty great.

**Author's Note:**

> any/all theories and theorists presented within may not be accurate because lbr it's been a while since i was in college. but zizek is 100% a nihilistic meme lord. fight me.
> 
> for anyone interested, [here's](http://www.thesugarhit.com/2016/03/salty-dawgs-salted-chocolate-malted-cupcakes.html) the cupcake recipe.
> 
> ty to mer for the beta & feedback <3


End file.
